English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Resumption of the workshops and the theme of hesitation 0:00 I think we're live. Good evening dear friends, dear comrades. It's been quite a while since we've been in direct contact. I think you've heard about the announcement that was posted on social media announcing quite a few resumptions.
0:36 So this one first, that is, our workshops as we had been running them lately, that is, every two weeks. But moreover, I confirm, and I'm very happy to be able to confirm, that we are resuming our in-person sessions. This vocabulary annoys me a bit. It reminds me of Véran or whatever, anyway. At the Centre Goscinny, for the regulars, and since there are quite a few, even many, new subscribers who should know that, generally, we do this on Fridays from 7pm to 9pm once a month.
1:26 So I confirm that the one that will open the season, so to speak, will be the one on October 14th, at 7pm at the Centre Goscinny. You have all the contacts on social media, it's very easy to find, and it's in the neighborhood of the Grande Bibliothèque, roughly, the national one. And besides, third resumption, that's quite a few resumptions, the resumption of the musico-philosophical sessions with Aymeric Monville.
2:06 I'm very glad he's available, and I'm very grateful for that. And each time, it corresponds to quite a lot of requests from you, that's why I'm happy to announce it, of course. So, this is like a resumption that's not really late, it's back-to-school time, some people haven't even fully gone back yet, even at the higher education level. But still, I don't want to waste too much time and I'd like to specify what will be a bit the content, the material, the theme, however you want to call it, of this year.
2:42 If I had to sum it up in one word, it would be hesitation. It'll become more concrete when we read the first text among those presented tonight. But hesitation, to begin with, I'm taking the word in its ordinary sense—should I talk to you about the current situation? I'm a septuagenarian, I've never seen such a danger of war.
3:13 Should I talk about the current situation? I remind you of that little youthful aphorism of Hegel's in his diary, which I quote fairly often, "You can never be more than your time." That's an illusion, but at best, you will be your time. Our time is dark right now. But we can have the opposite reflex, that is, to protect ourselves from current events, you see, on the contrary, and go to the other extreme of these drums of war, that is, to resume developments in the tone, the style, and in the vein, if you will, of our analytic reveries, for those who remember.
3:59 Well, precisely, this year's theme is that I'm going to spend my time hesitating between the two. So, I'd like to make a few little reminders, sorry to those for whom this will sound like repetition, even rehashing, but even so it concerns content that is never repeated enough. And then, there are all these new people, to whom I want to remind that these are, after all, workshops that try to have a philosophical resonance.
Philosophy and science against opinion 4:41 Not merely entertainment, nor ideological, nor political, nor musical, but literary in the proper sense, but properly philosophical. And I recall, without wanting to start everything over from scratch, and I refer here to... when you type "Philosophie" with Dominique Pagani on YouTube, you get the list, and if you also click on "Videos" because for the chronology it's better than "Home."
5:15 You have the list of all the videos since the beginning, right from the start, nearly seven years ago now. I had begun, like everyone who starts an introduction to philosophy, by recalling what philosophy properly consists of in relation to fields with which it can be confused. You know that it's... this too I repeat often, it's among things that resemble each other—philosophy, thought, religion, I don't know, art, culture—that one must make the most distinctions.
5:53 It's between an African elephant and an Asian elephant that one must be sure of one's footing, not between an elephant and a parrot, where there's no risk of multiplying confusions. Now, if we take up again a bit this attempt to say what is specific to the philosophical field, we always arrive at a kind of triangle, that's what I wanted to recall, where philosophy tries to...
6:28 and like a cursor, you see, we find again a bit of hesitation, which navigates between two extremes, which would be on one side mathematics, because there is a demand for rigor in philosophy. You'll forgive me this reminder session, it's still necessary, especially after such a long absence, to borrow a famous title. A demand for rigor that brings it close to the sciences in general, and to mathematics in particular—I recall, to illustrate this point, that the first great philosophical system written down that has come down to us, I believe, is the system of Plato.
7:09 Chronologically, Plato had inscribed at the entrance of his school, that is, the Academy—that's where the word comes from, isn't it?—because he had bought the gardens of Academos, a residential suburb, a residential outskirts, at the edge of Athens, which was called Academos, that's where it comes from. And so, he had put at the entrance of his school that let no one enter here who is not a geometer, so there has always been, already, a complicity between philosophy and, first extreme, knowledge, science—it's the same word, if you look at the Latin, science comes from scire, which means I know, so it's knowledge, I prefer the word knowledge, it's more extensive.
7:55 Knowledge, as opposed to—this is where you see what the word means, it's like when you see green better against red than green against blue, where you never know, like turquoise, whether it's blue or green. So, knowledge, as opposed to opinion—opinion, you know, is what you see on TV panels, at the local café, I have no contempt for the local café, which is a place of popular sociability, and where one can have very interesting, passionate views, on the ongoing football match, on men, on women, opinion.
8:31 No, philosophy tries, and this is the common point it has with science, to arrive at statements that don't depend on each person's whim. There you go. Or, if you prefer to be a bit more technical, universal and necessary, valid for everyone, and then, following from a logical necessity, which is to be demonstrated, if you prefer, and not asserted like a dogma. You see, when correcting papers, there's nothing more annoying than seeing philosophy papers begin—when you're young, it's not serious, you have that reflex, but I mean, it shouldn't last too long—you ask a question, and the first answer, the first sentence, is, "it seems to me, as for me, in my opinion, that..." well, we're here to communicate, and when you want to communicate, you have to try to say what you can have in common—it's written right there in "communicate," common—and not constantly put forward your singularity, especially when it's pitifully banal, so we end up achieving the opposite of what we want.
9:41 How many papers begin with "nowadays, pollution is a scourge," well, there you go, that's what you scoop up from the gutter, what you heard on television, on the front page of newspapers, what's rehashed everywhere, and you say "in our view," right, so there you go, so we try to distance ourselves from opinion—let's snub, in Greek, opinion is doxa, we, the paradoxes, the doxa, it has to be, that corresponds, I don't know, to the bottom of the cave, the world of illusion, there you go, but which can be very interesting when the goal isn't to know, to gain knowledge, but to get excited, to flirt, to show off, or simply to ask what you did during your vacation—I mean, still, that's quite pleasant too, there's nothing contemptible in that, but it's not the pursuit of knowledge. I make these reminders because it's important, because I want to come back to my hesitation, and so, I've developed a bit the first extreme, a complicity between philosophy and science.
10:51 in particular mathematics, that let no one enter here who is not a geometer, without even mentioning philosophical advances as important as, I don't know, Spinoza, Descartes, to stay within the classical century, for instance, which saw the apogee of metaphysics, or Leibniz—I'll take three titans, I mean in importance, I'm not telling you my personal tastes there, let's forget opinion, it's not my taste, it's not for everyone who studies philosophy, these are three, three beacons, aren't they, in the history of philosophy. Spinoza, Descartes is known for having said in the Discourse on Method that he learned little at school, except that he was particularly fond of mathematics because of the certainty and evidence of their reasoning, but he did not yet notice their true use, and thinking that they were only meant to serve the mechanical arts, he was astonished that, their foundation being so solid, nothing more elevated had been built upon it.
11:58 There you go, philosophy and mathematics. Leibniz wanted—and it's incredible for the time when you think of the development of computing today—to devise a system of communication that would use only two signs, the 1 and the 0, the 0 and the 1, you see, that was the binary system. And as for Spinoza, he's especially known for having written his masterpiece, the Ethics, or his major work, however you want to put it, without value judgment, more geometrico, or as they said at the time, according to the demonstrative method of geometry.
Rigor in natural language: from the thing to the subject 12:34 There you go. So, I won't dwell on it, we'll have plenty of occasions to illustrate. First tropism—tropism comes from tropos, which means curve—first attraction, philosophy, first toward scientificity, far from the opinion of the TV panel, of the local cafés, toward seriousness, rigor. But, to do this, and this is very important, this is what we're going to develop a lot tonight, and then, throughout the cycle that's coming this autumn, this rigor, it seeks to attain while remaining with the language I'm speaking with you right now, what linguists call natural language, as opposed to Y equals F of X, or minus B plus or minus B, all over 4AC over 2A, you see, those aren't words, those are algorithms, mathemes, whatever you want to call them, they're signs, very rigorous, well-defined, aren't they, which is not the case with everyday language.
13:39 There's no metaphor in mathematics, there are no images, no, no, it's univocal, as they say, when you want to speak in a rigorous manner, it's not equivocal, are they, the signs of mathematics, that can't have—whereas at the local café, already, when you say "democracy," no one has the same definition, and so everyday language, if mathematicians abandoned it—I've come back to this often, I apologize to those who've already heard it—but if they abandoned it, it's because they had excellent reasons, because they wanted a mode of communication, you see, that gets everyone to agree, once you've taken the same starting data, you must arrive at the same results, and this is what makes Aristotle say this famous formula, it's not—mathematics unites men, politics divides them, which hasn't lost its relevance, he's not talking about
14:49 mathematicians who might argue among themselves, not be in the same political camp, that's something else, he's talking about mathematics, meaning whatever the opinions of this or that mathematician, and whatever their functions in society, whether they work on tax optimization in a bank, right, or on research likely to finally defeat cancer, in both cases, I mean, mathematical models that will serve biology, if you prefer, in both cases, what they have in common is that when you give them, I don't know, an equation, they will find the same roots, that's what "mathematics unites men" means, there they forget their respective particularities, they leave them in the cloakroom, so there you go, as I've had occasion to come back to this often, I recall that often students who are in their first year of high school and who are good at literature, at French, at essay writing, think that philosophy
15:59 is going to be, they're going to continue the exercise of the literary essay, but more in depth—no, the difference precisely is that it demands rigor and univocity, and not merely elegance of form, it's not rhetoric, in the defensible sense, I mean, philosophy's goal is not the elegance of rhetoric, it's above all to seek, to arrive at propositions, as I told you, universal and necessary, true, that is, the common point with science, but with the language I'm speaking now, which isn't made for that, that's what's going to occupy us, yes, and which means that my story of hesitation, whether I'm going to talk about the war or whether I'm going to analyze a musical sequence—I say this in passing because I'm extremely gratified by the comments that have multiplied on the magnificent podcasts, I allow myself to speak of them in glowing terms, because it's the work of a technical team that I'm the first to thank, and by the way, I continue my parenthesis,
17:09 I am very reassured by the fact that in your comments, you say, you never miss an occasion to say the technical team must be congratulated for the quality of the sound, the transitions, etc., and the editing, the mixing, between these two extremes, because we talk about war or else, I don't know, a more fun domain, if you prefer to put it more casually—that's a first hesitation, but now, I've just shown you that everyday language itself forces us to take into account the problem of hesitation, because it's never quite univocal.
17:57 I'll take an example that will exasperate those who have been listening to me for a long time and who are attentive because they've already heard it, but when we say the day rises, the sun rises like the day rises, a common expression. We repeat it so often that we believe we're talking about a reality when we're actually making a metaphor, an image, we're in poetry and not in astronomy. The day doesn't rise, it hasn't set. Besides, it's not the sun that rises. It's us who move, and the Earth.
18:28 There you go, it rotates on itself. So, this is to show you on the one hand that mathematicians and scientists, who don't deal with what's going to occupy us, but rather with objects outside ourselves, were quite right to abandon this everyday language, weren't they, and to produce one that is their own, which is mostly composed of equations, roughly speaking, but that's it.
18:58 And the philosopher, he cannot, because philosophy—I think again of Plato—when you were a Greek and had a problem, you went to consult the oracle at Delphi, and at the entrance of the sanctuary, there was inscribed "know thyself." And there, we are no longer in the sciences. It's not about knowing, knowing the oscillations of the spin of the electron, researching whether light is a wave or a particle carried by a wave, as one finds stated in the mechanics of that good fellow de Broglie.
19:40 wave mechanics. Those are objects that will never contradict you. But know thyself, right? We move from objects to the subject. You understand the title of this cycle, and the subject in all this. In all these discussions, geopolitics, philosophy, religion, there is too often confusion between the subject and the object.
20:15 For example, the vogue of cognitive science proves indeed that we try to treat subjects as objects. Forgetting the wise formula of Auguste Comte, who was nevertheless a positivist, who had a genuine cult of the positive sciences, but who said that one cannot be at once on the balcony and watch oneself pass by in the street. The subject is the one who, from the balcony, looks.
Memory, contradiction and humility 20:45 I wanted to make this preamble, but there's also another, more structural hesitation. And there, I can't start everything over from scratch, so I refer you to the series of videos I mentioned earlier. I refer to a cycle we had called—I had put it as a question—nature or landscape. I clearly distinguished nature properly speaking, which bears no trace of human action, and landscape, where there can be, right, a beautiful half-timbered farm nestled at the back of a field, none of which is natural.
21:28 already neither the field nor the farm, right? That results from human activity against a backdrop of forest, it's not incompatible. That's not nature, it's abrupt. And I had done another cycle, you'll see why I bring them together, on memory, forgetting, and anamnesis. Forgetting, and then the repair of forgetting in the effort to bring back up, right, to bring memories back to the surface of consciousness.
22:00 And, staying with this last reference, we had concluded that the cursor that moves to go from the present toward the past runs up against another unconscious force inside the subject—I say this dogmatically for now, but we've had so many examples, there are so many in the best writers to illustrate it, or the best films, however you want to put it—there's another form, another force in the opposite direction that says no, there are things you'd better not remember, there's an inverse force, you see, so there's a cursor that goes forward, that goes back, you see the hesitation, I come back to it, that's a new form, it's not only logical hesitation as before, there are interests of the subject that are contradictory, there you go, and in the sciences there's no contradiction, for there to be contradiction, I say this to some who deal a lot with philosophy of nature, why not, but I still recall,
23:10 especially dialectics of nature, I quote, I recall that for there to be contradiction, there must first be diction, and stones don't speak, nor do stars, do they, nor the magnificent clusters of galaxies that the latest images from the most powerful telescopes keep sending us.
23:40 There are things to see, but there's nothing to hear, to listen to, I mean, to hear, yes, perhaps, why not, vibrations, but likewise, listen, there's no speech, and that's why—I'm not just going to make reminders, but I'm going to settle at least on the following, the fundamental philosophical question isn't "what is it," that happens too, but that's not proper to philosophy, that's not just for medicine, for the sciences, "what is it" is a question we often encounter, the philosophical question par excellence is "what do you call," which is not at all the same, because "what is the sun," well, I mean, go ask the astronomer, he'll be more qualified than me to answer, but on the other hand, if I ask an astronomer, "what do you call" a star, how do you distinguish a star from a planet, etc., there, I'm addressing another subject, and not an object, like the sun, which can answer me, and a dialogue is established, that's an enormous difference, a dialogos, of discourse, dialectic, we're not far, you see already, and there,
24:50 there can be contradiction, so, I come back to it, my screen of memory, I want to remember, I make efforts, since I know there are excellent film buffs, who know the history of cinema better than I do, actually—I think of my friend and comrade Sébastien Deville, for instance, whose excellent posts I recommend to you, or Lyosha, of course, as we haven't thought of Lyosha, who's an excellent director, of Mehdi, Mehdi Chentouf, of course, of Pierre-Alain, without whose editing and mixing, you and I would never have been in communication so often—in film history, there's a movie by Mankiewicz, if I remember correctly, called Suddenly, Last Summer, with an Elizabeth Taylor who's still very young, supposed to be 17 or 18 in that film, with Montgomery Clift,
26:00 Katharine Hepburn, well, stars of the first magnitude, from the '50s as they say, and in which, throughout the whole film, the female heroine, played by Elizabeth Taylor, a doctor, a psychiatrist, asks her to remember—she witnessed her brother's murder—and each time, she gets closer, closer and closer to the moment it happened, and then each time, she gets blocked, and you see the beads of sweat, you know, you've seen similar accounts, so there's another force that prevents, right, going all the way to the end of the trauma.
26:42 And so this hesitation, you see, isn't so much formal, I mean, it's the subject who is in contradiction with himself, there's a part of each of us that wants to know, and a part of each of us that doesn't want to know, right, and the subject in all this—but which one will win out, right, and so this whole story of hesitation is also an attempt, an effort to be as humble as possible.
27:18 I'm not talking about modesty—modesty is a posture, isn't it, some people play the modest one, there's nothing more vain, more narcissistic than those who play at being modest—I'm talking about humility. Modesty is in relation to others—I pretend to be very, I don't know, never getting a big head—whereas humility is in relation to oneself: from the moment a subject thinks, he knows he's not much, that's humility, a great virtue, Christianity, by the way, a cardinal virtue. From the moment he knows he's nothing, he has the right to act vain toward others, according to his own worldly interests, why not—the essential thing is that toward himself, he doesn't get caught up in the game, that's humility. So it's out of humility that I recall that philosophy is structurally hesitant, isn't it?
Hölderlin's homeland and the sources of the Danube 28:17 And so I'm going to start—because I don't much want to bore you with abstractions right at the start of the school year like this—I'm going to start with a text, if Pierre-Alain would kindly display it, the first text, which is a poem by Hölderlin. You'll say to me, you often quote Hölderlin, yes, but here I have a particular reason to quote him, and it's an occasion to thank someone who gave me the opportunity to revisit Hölderlin's homeland—I don't just mean Germany, I mean the very specific region, right, where he grew up, roughly the Black Forest and Swabia, which is not very far from Strasbourg, on the other side of the Rhine, if you will, but especially on the other side of the Black Forest massif, because it's mountains there, not the Alps, it's a bit like the Vosges, it was the same massif originally, the Hercynian massif, but I'm not here to give you a geography lesson, and the Rhine, which comes from the south,
29:27 which heads toward the north, split the Hercynian massif in two, over the course of millions of years, and so on the French side you have the Vosges, on the German side, the Black Forest, roughly the same geology, the same vegetation, great conifer forests, and it's in this region, as I told you, that this poet grew up, and some say he's the greatest poet of all time—there's no ranking, but I mean, he's above all the poet of poetry, sorry for the pleonasm, but those who have read him understand what I mean—and it's not just Hölderlin's region, it's also the region where the Danube has its source, and the Danube, the ancient Greeks called it the Ister, they traded with people from Northern Europe, and they knew there was this river, the Ister, and even a few travelers had gone there, I-S-T-E-R, that's the title of the poem, isn't it,
30:37 that we're going to try to grasp together, and I simply point out that toward the end of his life, Hölderlin multiplied poems whose titles are the names of rivers, like that—there's a hymn called "The Rhine," another called "At the Source of the Danube," now the Ister, the Danube, the same river—many people are surprised when told that it has its source there, not far from Strasbourg, in the mountains, in the valleys of the Black Forest. Now, it's been a while—I explain this beforehand because it's poetry that's difficult on first reading, but which is much simpler than one thinks once you see a bit what keeps recurring in it, namely, geographically speaking anyway—that's not poetry properly speaking—in its first kilometers, in the Black Forest, the Danube is a small stream, as is often the case with great rivers at their start, a small stream that takes forever, that flows slowly, and you can hardly believe it later becomes this great river as soon as it reaches the Swabian plain, which will turn back toward the origins of history, since it's the only one of the great rivers of Europe that flows from west to east,
31:47 to empty out there, over there, in the Danubian countries, the Balkans, Russia—what a journey! But it begins there, in those little valleys covered with fir trees, the Black Forest, and in magnificent places, and it's as if it were in no hurry to become, later, that Danube that flows through Vienna, through Budapest, a broad river, the beautiful blue Danube, as if it were another river altogether, isn't it? So I'm going to talk about this proto-Danube, well, I'm going to talk—the poem speaks to us of this proto-Danube, and you'll see just how much it illustrates my theme of hesitation.
Reading of L'Ister: shadow and Greek light 32:30 Without further delay, I'll read the text. "Jetzt kommt Feuer!" That's how it begins in German. "Now comes fire!" In French, it's a bit more... Translation is always difficult, isn't it, to render the original rhythms? "Jetzt kommt Feuer!" Like an explosion at the start. "Now comes fire!" When you see what the Black Forest is, which as its name indicates is very dark, isn't it? You wonder whether, once you're in it, you'll ever see the light of day again, except…
33:01 We already understand. Fire comes, fire. As if we had... we had stayed in this forest day for a long time, so that we long to return to the light. You see, there it starts already. We are eager to witness the day. You see, it's not so difficult. And the trial, through our knees, at once accomplished… The trial is that we've apparently walked a long time. It's not difficult. And the trial, at once through our knees, accomplished, the din can be sensed in the forest.
33:34 But we have been singing since the Indus. I say since, from, that's translations for you. But we, we sing of the Indus. Well now. I understand that the knees would be tired. An allusion to the great migrations. Hölderlin knew, people were beginning to know, at the time, about the Indo-European settlements. You see, the Indus. Almost all the peoples of Europe come from a region between the Urals, the Kuban, as they say in Russia, the Caucasus, etc.
34:05 The plains that are making headlines today between Ukraine and the Donbass. There you go. So, but we, we sing of the Indus. Well, here, here, a few kilometers from Strasbourg, having arrived, and of the Alpheus too, we have long searched, it's implied, yes, we have long searched for what? The place, with a capital P. A walking that is not simply a walking like that, like ants moving because there's a flood.
34:37 that changes, but a quest. There is a search for a place, for the place, the place. Isn't there? A beautiful passage where one says, I, I will go on searching for the place and the formula. No one without a wing has the power to seize what is close, right at hand. You would need wings, wouldn't you, to reach that place. To cross to the other shore.
35:07 It's like a kind of... That place, as if one resigned oneself to never being able to reach it. So, we'll stop there. Why? Because this spot doesn't look bad either. No one without a wing has the power to seize what is close, right at hand. To cross to the other shore. But we want, right here, to dig. A fertile land. For rivers, the Danube, devote this land to ploughing. So, we're going to move, you see, from migration, from wandering, from nomadism to settled life.
35:43 Ploughing is no longer hunting and gathering, it's really agriculture. Yes, when the grass grows and, in summer, the animals come to their banks to drink, men come too. But this river here, this stream, is called the Ister. There, it's been named. Schön wohnt er. I say it first in German for those who understand the language, because it's so hard to translate. And it's so simple in German. Schön, beautiful.
36:14 Wohnt, he dwells. Er, he. He dwells beautifully. Word for word. He dwells in beauty. So how does he put it? Splendid is his dwelling. And it flames with columns, foliage. That's the tree trunks. You have to picture the Black Forest. And it stirs. Wild. They stand erect. The columns, the tree trunks, are raised one above another. That's well observed. And in one leap, above, a second span, the roof of rock advances.
36:45 isn't it, the mountain. Also, you see, a reflection of a good spirit. Now I see the welcome that he had to offer to Heracles, to Hercules. But what is Hercules doing here? We're right in Germany, in the Black Forest. They knew everything by heart. The Germans, at the time, were steeped in classical culture, in Greek and Latin. They knew Greek history very well, mythology, Greek poetry and literature, theater, tragedy, of course.
37:18 Let's leave that aside. But never forget that he is steeped in all that. Now, it is true that a legend tells, at the time, among the Greeks, that Heracles once wandered north in search of the sources of the Danube. It's a legend. Verified or not, who knows. But in any case, the legend dates from antiquity. The legend is authentic. So, now I see the welcome that Hercules had to offer, from afar, shimmering, down to Olympus below, further down.
37:51 You see? It's as if from where he is in the Black Forest, he can almost see Greece right at hand. You see? A vision. Look closely at the contrasts. That's what explains everything. We're in the shade, in the Black Forest. Foliage, column, fir-tree trunks, rock. And there, there is the light of Greece, shimmering, over there. All right? Do you remember the heatwave this summer? The heatwave!
38:21 But look, look! Now I see the welcome that he had to offer to Heracles, from afar, shimmering, down to Olympus, further down, when he himself, seeking shade, climbed back up from the scorching Isthmus, going west. There is an opposition, look, there are several oppositions telescoping into one another between south and north, between the Mediterranean world and the Nordic world, between the seashore and the coniferous forest.
38:51 And yet, they're only half an hour's drive from one another. Between day and darkness, light, if you prefer, and shadow. And between scorching heat and coolness. And he continues from there. Certainly, why did he come there, Heracles, since he's a hero? Certainly, never would courage—that's what heart meant at the time—have failed them there, there, the heroes, the Theseuses, the Heracleses, never would courage have failed them there, but breath also needed coolness.
39:29 You see the hesitation. And he chooses instead to come here, to the sources of the waters and yellow banks, which higher up give off fragrance. You know, the smell of resin, black with fir groves. Or in a valley, the hunter—it's teeming with game—the delighted hunter at midday, at midday, sorry, when one hears growing, hears the great resinous trees of the Ister growing, the trees, it's extraordinary, isn't it?
40:06 As if, with the ear, one could perceive such a force of growth in these trees that one could actually perceive the growth. There's this fantastic order to it. But he seems almost, and we come back to the Danube—after all, he is the hero of the poem, it's the Ister, that's the title, isn't it, the Greek name for the Danube—but he seems almost, you see, hesitations every time, almost as if he were going backward.
40:36 I told you, afterward it becomes the great river flowing through Budapest, through Vienna, but as if it were in no hurry to reach that width of a true river. But as if it wanted to remain forever a stream, a torrent, discreet, hidden away back there in those forests, sheltered, sheltered. But he almost, yes, sheltered perhaps from the sound of boots that we hear. You see the hesitations that we'll deal with throughout this cycle. Because one must either speak of war or take refuge, as this river does, trying to remain in its original nest, just so, isn't it?
41:10 Let me repeat this magnificent passage: certainly, never would courage—the heart—have failed them there, there in Greece, but breath also needed coolness. And he chooses instead to come, Heracles, to come to the sources, here, of the waters and yellow banks which, higher up, give off fragrance, black with fir groves, where in a valley the hunter roams, wanders at midday, while one hears the resinous trees of the Ister growing.
The river as sign: sign and signal 41:40 But he seems almost, he, the Ister, to be going backward. It seems to me he must come from the East. There would be much to say about this. And why does he stay clinging to these mountains? You see, as if he had no desire to move forward. Clinging to these mountains, and steep. The other river, the Rhine, isn't far, the Rhine flows below in the plain between the Black Forest and the Vosges. That's what forms the border between Germany and France. Besides, from the top of the Black Forest, you can see the Rhine valley very well, from the ridges of the Black Forest.
42:14 The Rhine has moved off sideways. The Rhine heads straight north, because it flows into Holland—you might ask me, but why does he multiply the rivers? He tells you, in vain, rivers never flow into the arid land. That means there is a lesson to be drawn from the courses of rivers, from their trajectory. In vain, rivers never flow into the arid land. But how? A necessary sign, we must try to understand.
42:44 Nothing but a clear, plain sign which sun and moon carry in their heart. Earlier, we saw that there were oppositions. Day and night, sun and moon. It's not so complicated. You see? Which carry, contain, all the contradictions that overcome them, well, that hold them within, isn't that so? Which do not shed feathers by choosing one side of the contradiction against the other, isn't that so? Nothing but a clear, plain sign which sun and moon carry in their heart, without their ever separating, neither sun nor moon.
43:17 And onward, it perseveres, day as much as night, again, you see, the union of opposites. And the heavenly ones, the supernatural world, the gods, find life again in such warmth between them. So, the gods need signs. Signs. That is why the signs are also the joy of the Most High. How, him, the Most High? We must not forget that Hölderlin, and his comrade Hegel, who was his exact contemporary, were together at the university, in Tübingen, not far from there, one of the wonderful, one of the rare towns that was not razed, bombed, whose town was built on the model of the house of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
44:07 It's a very beautiful town. And a fine university too, a small town, not very big, so there were, you know, three students for every seven inhabitants, roughly. Now, at the time, these were students of theology—it was the only way to have a career prospect at the time. There were no proper philosophy studies as such, as we have now in our universities. You had to go through theology, and their mothers pushed them into theological studies.
44:39 Let's not forget we're in the Protestant world, so one can marry. One has an income, it's a pious activity, one is connected to one's community. That was it. They weren't all that keen on it, all three of them there. The two greatest philosophers of their time, Hegel and Schelling, and the greatest poet—some say of all time—Hölderlin, isn't that so, in the same room, it's extraordinary, imagine the discussions they must have had, at the very moment news reached them from Paris that the Bastille had been stormed, and soon the Napoleonic epic began—what an era, you see!
45:13 In that place, out of the way. Out of the way, not London, not Paris, not the great kingdoms, neither Spain nor Italy. Germany was only just beginning to make itself heard, wasn't it, in the concert of nations, as they say. It wasn't even unified yet; for the time being they belonged to the Grand Duchy of Württemberg, that region. So you can forget all that. What matters is that they were theology students, that's why they speak of the Most High, these images, the images they draw on.
45:43 But what they say here is very, very important. They are also the joy of the Most High. How else, otherwise, would he descend here, if there were not... Here, you see, earlier I told you, mathematicians have abandoned everyday language, the world of signs. Day breaks. The world of signs. Not the signal. Animals, they know the signal. An animal, out in the bush, senses there's a bushfire, it senses it literally, through its nose, doesn't it?
46:13 Immediately, it bolts, it knows there's a danger of fire. It has no wish to be roasted on all fours. That's the signal. That is, there is a natural link between the signifier and the signified. Yes, one has to be a bit abstract, but no, we need to work at this. Whereas the sign, there is no relation at all between signifier and signified. Proof of that is that from one language to another, the sounds are not at all the same. You see? Let's say I tell you 'lion,' for example.
46:43 That's the sign, the word. As for the reality it designates, I won't name it, because if I name it, I'll just find another word again. But the reality, the animal, if you like, that it designates, that fact will be said as Löwe in German. That's not lion, there's an L, for those clever enough to notice. Yes, unfortunately, in Mali, it's said Diarra—Diarra, like the great footballers who come to us through immigration.
47:13 Yes, Diarra, lion, no relation at all. This total independence between signifier and signified characterizes language. It's neither the world of mathematics nor that of the animal signal. You see, the sign is the total independence of signifier and signified, what is called the arbitrariness of the sign in linguistics, isn't it? Put forward by the founder of modern linguistics, of structural linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure. Good, so, now, what does Hölderlin say?
47:50 Why did I make this detour about the sign? Because he says that the world of signs—the fact that this river lingers, isn't in a hurry to flow like that and to widen—for him, this isn't merely an effect, a cause, because there's the slope, that's the business of science, that's not poetry or philosophy—but that, beyond that, it has a meaning, that it has a sense, if a sign has a sense. So, now, these signs, for Hölderlin, are the way of forging a link between what is above us, the most important thing, and ourselves.
The end of L'Ister: "what it does, no one knows" 48:30 How else, otherwise, would he descend here, implying, if there were not the world of signs? Is she Hertha the green one? "Earth" in English, that's the earth, "Erde" in modern German? Is she Hertha the green one? The signs are "the children of heaven." But this one, this river, remains still enigmatic, a sign hard to decipher, too placid, I tell you, it looks like a little stream—the immense one, what is going to become the immense river of the Danube, several thousand kilometers long—but too placid it appears, never widened.
49:06 So, when you see the size it takes on, especially when it reaches Romania, the Iron Gates, between Hungary and Romania, it's almost laughable. Yes, in the hour when, in its youth, the day must come when, growing, it prepares itself—there it is, it's about to arrive in full thirst and become a true river—another one, as if it were an entirely different stream, so different is it, another already thrusts up its splendor, and such that the colts foam at the bit, and in the distance a sound of pounding air can be heard.
49:40 For him, that is enough. But, a somewhat mysterious ending: the rock calls for the cutting—you know, I told you earlier that the erosion of the Rhine had split the Hercynian massif in two, with the Vosges to the west and the Black Forest to the east. But the rock calls for the cutting and the earth for the furrow. Nothing could be practicable without some respite.
50:10 And here comes the fall—but what he does, this river, no one knows. There, this is the humility with which I wanted to begin this cycle, and why I lingered on this particular poem. First, to express my gratitude toward someone who follows our videos and who is very far away, geographically, since he lives in the Philippines, even though he's one of our fellow countrymen, a great scientist—I'm thinking of Sébastien, another Sébastien, who was immensely kind enough to invite me, to take me, so to speak, walking in the Black Forest.
50:57 I thought I would never see those places again, because I'm no longer very young, and he took me there. We passed by exactly the spot described here, the last one, isn't it. And that inspired me for this cycle on hesitation, isn't it. Nothing could be practicable without some respite, but what he does, this river, no one knows. So you see, it's... So someone might say to me, yes, fine, but with everything going on right now, we're no longer going to be allowed comfort, no longer allowed warmth, light—I'm not exaggerating, it came from the very top of the State: abundance, they told us, is over.
Mallarmé and the need to act 51:45 Well, that mostly applied to those who are used to abundance—I don't know if that's your case, it isn't mine. I'm not complaining. But still, I mean, abundance, I'd like some. Where was I? I'm going to take a text, isn't it, where precisely there are these two possibilities, between dealing with current events or, as we've just seen, hiding away there among the columns, the trees, the trunks, the great fir trees of the Black Forest whose growth you can hear with your own ear, isn't it.
52:24 And it's a more difficult text, although—well, this one is in French, it's an original, there's no translation, it's by Mallarmé. Mallarmé, he's known for—one would need a translation even into French sometimes, wouldn't one! But here we are, we're together, don't worry, this text is familiar to me. All right, I'll tell you the gist of it, that way we won't hesitate too much—it will be a passage. Apparently, a young man had written, as one writes to famous men, a young man, a troubled young man, an adolescent with issues, had written, sir, I feel the need to act, I would like to do something useful, as opposed to poetry, all that, to act in the outside world, to devote myself to a cause, to be a militant, I don't know, you see—he had approached Mallarmé about this, somewhat anxiously, you see, several times a comrade came, so there it is, the same one, this other one—you're not obliged to understand every detail—Mallarmé, the same, this other, well yes, that's Mallarmé, to confide to me the need to act, the same,
53:34 it's—well, I'll tell you anyway—it's not the first time a young man comes to someone he regards as a master to ask for advice on how to act, so it's always a bit the same thing, but this one, well, is a new one, so another, the same, this other, to confide to me the need to act—what was he aiming at? Here, we're no longer in reverie, but in action, the antithesis of the previous text, as the approach toward me announced also on his part, his too, young, I specify, you see, I insist on these words to show you it's not me inventing and interpreting, it is indeed a young man—to him, young, announced then the occupation of creating, which seems supreme, and succeeding with words, I insist—what exactly did he mean by need to act?
54:22 So, he gives several ways of understanding what that means: to unclench one's fists, a break from sedentary dreaming, you see, one is fed up with being withdrawn into oneself, at home, and now one is going to leave home and go out into the world, to unclench one's fists, a break from sedentary dreaming for a restless counterpart, with the idea that thus an urge to move takes hold, but this generation seems to me not very restless, the generation, meh, as they used to say back then about young people, not very restless, apart from political disinterest, apart from any urge for bodily extravagance, except—so, when does the body of this generation get restless?
55:08 The monotony, certainly, of winding it between the hocks on the roadway, according to the instrument currently in fashion, the fiction of a dazzling continuous rail—I can hear you thinking, I hear some of you saying, I don't understand any of this, but yes, this is your generation—he's talking about the bicycle. Look closely, it was brand new at the time. Except—the monotony, certainly, of winding it between the hocks—and there you go, you see, astride your bicycle, on the roadway, according to the fashionable instrument, the fad for the velocipede, as they said back then, was exploding—on the roadway, between the hocks, it's not out of favor—the fiction of a dazzling continuous rail, I always have that iron bar in front of me, and I write it plainly, Mallarmé, to act—so we come back to it, what is that, to act—without this, and for whoever does not begin the practice of it, to smoke—he's being a bit ironic here, he used to smoke cigars, there's a very beautiful painting
56:18 of Mallarmé by Manet, where, drifting off almost diagonally across the canvas, there is the smoke from his cigar, isn't there, he's stretched out on his couch—to act without this, and for whoever does not begin—that's it, smoking, that's it, smoking, one has to draw on it, that's a bit like acting, humor, so signified the visitor, I understand you—philosophically now, let's be serious, let's take the young man's request seriously—to produce, on many people, mind you, there's a definition of action here by Mallarmé, to produce, on many, a movement, which gives you back in return the emotion of having been its cause, that you were the principle of it, therefore, and therefore, that you exist—so now I'm the one adding words—for Mallarmé, it's a principle, Mallarmé is a bit elliptical, as they say, he skips words—which gives you back in return the emotion of having been the principle of it, therefore, exist, with an s at the end, therefore, that you exist, isn't that so, ah well, because you need proof that you exist, and, well, he adds, of which no one is, beforehand, ever quite sure.
57:29 I'm going to make a parenthesis here, we find in Hegel's aesthetics, going back to Hölderlin's time, the beginning of the 19th century, the end of the 18th, beginning of the 19th, 1801, 1802, 1807, the publication of the Phenomenology, well, we find in Hegel, in his Aesthetics, it's rather from 1815, 1820, in the first great Aesthetics, after Kant's Critique of Judgment, the previous century, in several volumes, undoubtedly his longest work, which wasn't directly written in his own hand, but is his students' notes, which he validated—he was wary of censorship.
58:11 So, he had a sympathy for the French Revolution, which was very poorly seen—in the Germany of the time, we had defeated the armies, the revolutionary armies, Napoleon's, the whole French history, the blue-white-red flag, it was a nightmare for the monarchs and the aristocrats of the time, so one had to be careful. So, in the Aesthetics, he gives the example of the child who is by a river, you see, we come back a bit to our theme of the river, who is alone and throws pebbles into the water like that, and it's marvelous to see the ripples he produces.
58:50 And he says very well that this is, for him, a way of having the impression, even if he wants to see it, that the world answers him, that he has an effect, and so that makes him feel his own existence better. So, I repeat, first, his definition of acting, and I'll continue. To act, without this, for whoever, like me, only ever begins the exercise by smoking—wait, let me be clear, philosophically speaking, it means producing on many, a public, a crowd, a movement—that's what YouTubers do—a movement that gives you back the emotion that you were its principle; principle means beginning, origin, cause—that you were its principle, that you exist.
Writing: the depth of darkness in language 59:40 So, none of it is taken for granted beforehand. This practice, then, acting on people, can be done in two different ways. This practice takes two forms. Either—this is Mallarmé's choice in his life—he was always a small English teacher, very far from anything like today's media, what we'd call a talk show, a set, who received, every Tuesday, on Rue de Rome, a few people amazed by his manner of presenting things, and simply by his speech.
1:00:14 This practice takes two forms: either through a will unknown—lasting a lifetime—unknown, at least to the world, until the multiple burst forth—think of that. Otherwise, well, let's go back to the TV set, the outlets—that wasn't the case back then, there was the press, all that, high society, cafés—think of that—otherwise the outlets available now, in a foresight, newspapers, and their whirlwinds, you see, it's not that difficult, and their whirlwinds determine for him a force, in some sense, made up of contrary elements, with immunity, a null result, according to disposition, plenitude, haste.
1:00:59 So, he gives him the choice, and then, all of a sudden, there's Mallarmé's first answer: you want to act? Write. So the young man wasn't expecting that—he thought he'd join a political organization—this is Mallarmé, it's not my point of view, but so the text is clear: write—look, there's already a dash, a space—but before that, I don't want to skip this paragraph—your act always applies itself to paper, for to meditate without a trace becomes evanescent.
1:01:38 An encouragement to write, because otherwise everything turns into mush in your head, doesn't it? For to meditate without a trace becomes evanescent. Nor let instinct exalt itself in a few vehement and lost gestures that you sought—come on, stop fidgeting, write. Agitation is not action. The inkwell—back then it wasn't Bic pens—the inkwell, crystal, it has the shape of a crystal glass inkwell, like a consciousness, with its drop, at the bottom of relative darkness, so that something might be, damn it, good.
1:02:14 You see, I started with that earlier. Someone says to me, but what's the connection with what you said at the start? Now we see it. There's a bottom of darkness. Writing—we think that's it, we're going to clarify things. But no, there will always be, at the bottom, at the bottom of writing, of language, whether spoken or written, a bottom of darkness. It's not the system of mathematical signs, where everything is perfectly clear, clarified, unambiguous. When I say the day is breaking, am I in astronomy, am I in poetry—what is it?
1:02:44 It's not obvious. I hesitate, I hesitate. As soon as you dig a little, you enter a labyrinth that never ends—the crystal inkwell, like a consciousness, with its drop at the bottom of relative darkness, so that something might be—then, say, he manages to write two pages, pushes the lamp aside. That means, that's enough for today, we'll continue tomorrow, then pushes the lamp aside. You will notice, one does not write—whether it's a letter to a friend, to a lover, to one's parents, to an employer—you will notice, one does not write luminously on a dark field.
1:03:31 It's true, we write black on white, and not the reverse, luminously on a dark field. The alphabet of the stars alone is thus inscribed. The constellations, in the sky, at night, right? That, that is luminous on a dark field. Let me start again, it's magnificent. You will notice, one does not write luminously on a dark field. The alphabet of the stars alone is thus indicated.
1:04:01 Sketched out, or interrupted, man carries on, black on white. So, I come back to the share of mystery there is in language, right? This fold of darkness—it comes back, the obscurity, dark, lace, that holds the infinite, woven by a thousand, each according to their own thread, or extension. Now, obviously, with word processing, we see it a bit less, and even so, there are still quite a few crossings-out and so on, but when it was done with a quill, it was nothing but threads, wasn't it?
1:04:32 Each according to their own thread, or extension, and ignoring its secret, assembles distant interlacings, where a luxury sleeps, waiting to be inventoried. Strige—never mind what it means, they say—the Symbolists loved rare words, that's it, you can forget it. Strige, it's a thing that's aged a bit. Strige, knot, foliage—and present—I'll stop there with this excerpt—with the bit of mystery, indispensable, you see, the hesitation to shine the spotlight in order to illuminate everything, with the bit of mystery, indispensable, that remains, expressed somewhat—that seems to me contradictory: how can mystery, that is, what is interior, be exterior, expressed?
Baudelaire: Chant d'automne and the meter of Harmonie du soir 1:05:17 There we are. Now, I wouldn't want, for this first session of the autumn term—no, no, I don't make my transitions randomly, not at all—I'm thinking of a poem by Baudelaire, which I'll recite to you now, called 'Autumn Song,' which begins with this line: 'Soon we shall plunge into the cold darkness.'
1:05:50 Farewell, bright light of our too-short summers—'Soon we shall plunge into the cold darkness.' Winter. Farewell, bright light of our too-short summers, already I hear falling, with a funereal thud, the wood resounding on the courtyard pavement—back then, yes, they heated with wood. Maybe we'll come back to that, at the pace we're going. 'Soon we shall plunge into the cold darkness.'
1:06:21 Why did I move on to this? Because again, you see the share of darkness, the share of shadow. When? In autumn. It's called 'Autumn Song.' I'm trying to stay seasonal. Autumn is the twilight of the year. I'm spinning the metaphor a bit. The twilight of the year. That is, if we compare the year to a long day, autumn is the twilight. It's the decline.
1:06:52 It's the leaves falling. It's the decline of warmth and light. I'm not making any value judgment here. Some people love this season best. While for others it announces winter. Baudelaire, for instance, dreads the coming of winter. In the poem I just sketched out, he goes on to say, 'All winter shall enter into my being.'
1:07:22 Anger, hatred, shivering, hard and forced labor. And like the sun in its polar hell, my heart shall be nothing but a red and frozen block. The Uber images. Oh, thank you. Thanks, Pierre-Alain. Pierre-Alain, faster than Lucky Luke. It's marvelous. Really, I'm always amazed by technology. 'Soon we shall plunge into the cold darkness. Farewell, bright light.' Now I can check whether I've made any memory mistakes. 'Of our too-short summers, already I hear falling, with funereal thuds'—so funereal, also dark, black—'the wood resounding on the pavement of the courtyards.'
1:07:59 All winter shall enter into my being. Anger, hatred, shivering, horror, hard and forced labor. And like the sun in its polar hell, my heart shall be nothing but a red and frozen block. I won't go on with the rest, Pierre-Alain. But if you're that fast, can you send me, from the same collection, Baudelaire, same author, same collection, 'The Flowers of Evil,' 'Evening Harmony.' And you'll see that even in the same author, there can be a dreaded vision of autumn, because it announces winter, but also a paradisiacal vision.
1:08:35 So now, we're going to see, and this will deepen our story about hesitation. I'm not letting go of my thread. Behind the appearance of jumping from one subject to another, it's always the same thread I'm spinning, if you look closely. I'll give you the beginning of 'Evening Harmony,' which is one of the peaks of Baudelaire's poetry, and one of the most—for now I'm speaking in terms of consideration, I'm not yet in the analysis, I'm looking at it a bit from outside. Thank you very much.
1:09:05 He's an Impressionist poet, it's exactly the same period. Baudelaire, moreover, had a deep friendship with Manet, and vice versa. And it's rather contemporary, even very much so. Now, in this poem, there are no feelings, or very few feelings, ideas, reflections, thought put into verse—that never makes for very great poetry. No. These are sensations, impressions, in the physical sense.
1:09:35 Here come the times. Almost biblical. Yes, evening. Here come the times, when, vibrating, a sensation on its stem, each flower evaporates like an incense burner. You know, the incense burner, in churches, that they swing during ceremonies, and that gives off that smell of incense. Smells, olfactory impressions here. Here come the times, when, vibrating on its stem, each flower evaporates like an incense burner. I'm not losing my thread.
1:10:06 Yes, the tone is quite different from the previous poem. Sounds and scents turn in the evening air. Melancholy waltz, and languid vertigo. Waltz for the ear, sounds, scents for the nose. Each flower evaporates like an incense burner. When a poem repeats a line from the previous stanza in the following stanza, it's inspired by a kind of Malay poetry, from Malaysia, which was fashionable at the time, oriental exoticism.
1:10:38 And it's called a pantoum, but you can forget that. Pantoum, P-A-N-T-O-U-M. So, you can write a mediocre poem doing a pantoum, just virtuosity, or you can make a masterpiece, like what we have here. Each flower evaporates like an incense burner. And now we continue. The violin trembles like a heart that is afflicted. Here there's a bit of feeling. The violin trembles like a heart that is afflicted, but above all we hear the sound of the violin.
1:11:08 Melancholy waltz, and languid vertigo, again a repetition. And a new line, the sky is sad and beautiful, like a great altar of repose. And we continue. The violin trembles like a heart that is afflicted. No, I'm not being snobbish saying 'violon.' No, no, it's for musical reasons. Because if you say 'violon' [without pronouncing the final syllable], it will be missing a foot. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
1:11:40 If I say 'violon' [short], that makes 11. No, not 12. The violin trembles, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Like a heart that is afflicted. Excuse me, Pierre, let me ask to go back to the beginning of this poem. Let's dig a bit deeper into these musical matters. Here come the times, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, when vibrating on its stem.
1:12:12 Here come the times—the sound stops. Or, vibrating on its stem—the sound extends, a feminine syllable. That's what it's called in poetics, right? In metrics, if you will. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, masculine. So if you wanted to code it, you'd put a capital M above 'temps,' you see. Or vibrating on its stem, F, feminine. It's feminine when it ends in a silent E. Each flower evaporates like an incense burner.
1:12:44 Now here, it's F, F, all feminine. In the middle of the line, that is, what's called the hemistich, at 6, which is half of 12—these are alexandrines, right? Each flower evaporates, each flower evaporates, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, but since the silent E is silent, we act as if the R links to a C. Each flower evaporates thus, as if it were R, A, I, N, each flower evaporates like an incense burner. So there's no pause.
1:13:15 You see the rhythm of the poem, how calculated it is. What a musician, right? What a score! At this moment, there's a message, there are things—it's the sunset, it's the waltz, sounds and scents turn in the evening air—well, it tells us things, but there's also, in parallel, a music that is extremely precise. Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo. Now wait, I just skipped one—sounds and scents, again, M, F, right?
1:13:47 Sounds and scents—we stop on them, the sound stops on 'parfums'—turn in the evening air; whether 'soir' has an E or not, it doesn't, of course, but that changes nothing, it stays feminine, because the sound extends, that's what matters, right? You see the difference between... Sorry. Yes, I press the key and lift my finger right away, that cuts the sound, but if I keep my finger pressed down, that's feminine, whereas that's masculine.
1:14:19 It's a convention, you could reverse it. Each flower evaporates like an incense burner, the violin trembles like a heart that is afflicted, melancholy waltz and languid vertigo, again all feminine, the sky sad and beautiful, masculine, like a great altar of repose. This is a magnificent poem, but if you look closely, there's no story being told with a beginning and an end—it's a succession of sensations, one chasing the other, like that, or going round in circles, or coming back, like a round dance of sensations. It's an incredible modernity for the time.
Twilight between day and night: memory and nothingness 1:14:56 The sky is sad and beautiful like a great altar of repose—there we have something new: the sun has drowned in its clotting blood. Now listen to this, the verbal magic, the hesitation, right? Between what? What is twilight? It's the moment that in French we call 'between dog and wolf'—it's the most dangerous time for drivers, you see less well between dog and wolf than at night when there are headlights, that's already clearer.
1:15:30 You see the light against a dark background better, but here, between dog [and wolf], there's an ambiguity, hesitation, twilight. Right? We're heading toward night, just as earlier in 'Autumn Song' we were heading toward winter, toward darkness, toward cold, and so you understand what follows: a tender heart—of course, he's speaking for himself—that hates the vast black void, because if it's twilight, it means we're heading toward the vast black void, of the luminous past—look how he turns his back, on the future, on what lies ahead, during twilight, that is, on the coming night—a tender heart that hates the vast black void, of the luminous past, turns back like Janus, toward the past, gathers up every vestige. Autumn, twilight, are the moment of memories, as the end approaches, all of a sudden, everything comes back to memory.
1:16:32 It's Apollinaire, in 'The Song of the Poorly Loved,' who says, 'My beautiful ship, oh my memory, have we sailed enough?' That is to say, the day has already been long, 'have we sailed enough on a wave bitter to drink?' You see, this isn't morning. 'My beautiful ship, oh my memory, have we sailed enough on a wave bitter to drink? Have we wandered enough from the beautiful dawn to the sad evening?' The beautiful dawn, yes, it's happier in the morning, everything starts over from zero, you still have a whole life ahead of you, from the beautiful dawn to the sad evening.
1:17:10 A tender heart—I'm in the process of showing you not to let yourselves be, as capital tries to shut us in, to set us against each other in bubbles, right? Corsicans against the French, men against women, the young against the old, Hutus against Tutsis, and Ukrainians against Russians. Don't let yourselves be fooled. Everyone—look, Apollinaire and Baudelaire are very different, but they say the same thing; the important things are universal. A tender heart, that hates the vast black void, of the luminous past, gathers up every vestige.
1:17:44 In Proust, this is called 'In Search of Lost Time.' An immense undertaking over the years—on his deathbed, Proust waged a battle, because he was sick, he had to finish his work before dying, and he managed it. He had thought, all his life—I seem to keep making interruptions, but no, I keep repeating the same thing, showing the fruitfulness of the theme. It's not me, I'm only transmitting it, these are not obvious symmetries.
1:18:14 Proust had thought, when he was in good health, in his youth, that he would have wanted to be a great writer, but he thought he was a failed writer, that everything had already been said before him, and so well, so beautifully, he hadn't foreseen all that had already been written. And then death had to put its foot on his chest for him, all of a sudden, to start writing. This could be him, the tender heart, a tender heart that hates the vast black void of the luminous past, gathers up every vestige, In Search of Lost Time.
1:18:47 And here, for the second time, the sun has drowned—I won't say masculine anymore, here it's obvious—in its clotting blood. The last line, your memory—it's the first time we see another person, apparently a female figure, no doubt for Gautier—your memory shines within me like a monstrance. A kind of final ecstasy. I go back to 'the sun has drowned in its clotting blood.' The poet's anguish that was there at the beginning, right?
1:19:17 Here, come the times, vibrating on its stem, each flower evaporates, sounds and scents turn in the evening air—we didn't yet quite know what mood was going to emerge from all this. But what is certain, well, when he says a tender heart that hates the vast black void, there's no more mystery, there's this anguish of seeing that it's very beautiful, the sunset, like that, the twilight, but I mean, the more time passes, the more time works against us, is going to leave us facing the night, the void, the image of death, and so on.
1:19:48 I'm not going to elaborate, everyone understands these analogies very well. Except that the sun has stopped. Frozen, the sun—look at the verbal magic, Baudelaire achieved such metrical, musical perfection that he froze the sun's course. The sun has drowned in its clotting blood. Here I can't help thinking of a magnificent painting by Monet, which I'm sure most of you have already seen, even if you've forgotten it, and perhaps some of you know it well, where we see, near Westminster in London, the Thames in the evening mist—it's a Monet—and we see a reddish sun exactly like that, like a bloodstain, with its reflection, like that, in the water of the Thames.
1:20:39 The sun has drowned in its clotting blood. Your memory shines within me like a monstrance. You see, there was a hesitation between what and what. Come on, because I'm not going to keep repeating the word, I'm not going to do verbal trickery or give the word to make you believe you have the thing. As if I said 'Open sesame' and, presto, it opens—life would be easy that way. No, there's a hesitation between day and night, between light and darkness. How? We had already seen it from the very beginning of the Ister.
1:21:10 We stay at the bottom of the forest, the black forest, in the midst of its firs. And the rocks? Or else, we seek daylight and light toward the land of Heracles, the sun-baked land, torrid, shimmering. Hesitation between light and darkness, between day and night. And I could multiply the analogies even further, couldn't I? So I'm checking anyway, yes, that's it.
From the triangle to the square, then mathematics and abstraction 1:21:45 We're soon going to reach 10pm. So, is it, yes, Pierre-Alain must have noted, I'm not going to go any further this evening, you have the program, we'll come back to this hesitation. And I still want to say one last thing before going through the questions. One last very important thing, going back to the very beginning of what I said, philosophy sits between two extremes. I named the first, mathematics, and it took me almost two hours to tell you the other extreme, which I didn't state outright, but which I illustrated: poetry.
1:22:22 Isn't that so? Since poetry, like philosophy, uses language and not a system of abstract signs like mathematics, which are very precisely defined. So they have that in common. But on the other hand, the philosopher seeks rigor, demonstration, which is not the world of poetry. Rigor, yes, but not demonstration. And so, you see, the philosopher — there's an instance missing in all this.
1:22:55 So my triangle is going to become a square. It's the political. Between these two extremes, the present, political current affairs in the sense of great extensiveness, isn't it? The problem of public life, our relation not to things, but to others. So I'm telling you in advance that this is going to occupy us for quite a while, for a good number of sessions, until we ask: up to what point can philosophy travel a common road with science, as a kind of companionship, and at what point must it reclaim its independence and move closer to poetry in order to take the interests of the subject into account.
1:23:41 That's really the goal of the operation. That is, to drop the logic of things, of objects, in order to turn toward the logic of the self, of subjects. That is, you, me, her, him, them, she, plural. There we go. Let's move on to the questions. Can we say that mathematics is the highest level of abstraction that philosophy seeks to construct? Well, I'll start with a historical answer.
1:24:13 It's the easiest, but maybe also a bit superficial. But anyway, it can help put things in place and furnish a little the deserted house of general culture. Let me explain. Depending on the era, yes. I gave three examples earlier from the 17th century. I see that pretty much everyone agrees that it's the apogee of classical metaphysics. Never were there so many proofs of the existence of God, etc., and of the immortality of the soul, as in the 17th century.
1:24:45 So, with a few names — Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Malebranche — the first-magnitude stars. For someone like Leibniz, for instance, I point out to those who may not know that he's not only one of the greatest philosophers in the history of the discipline, he's also one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. He did nothing less than work out the formula delta Y over delta X, from which all infinitesimal calculus follows, at the same time as Newton. There's a little dispute between them over who was first — in fact, both arrived at roughly the same time, one in England and the other in Germany, at this prodigious advance that was infinitesimal calculus, except that Leibniz's formula, delta Y over delta X, remained the more practical, isn't it, and the more widely used.
1:25:36 These are great men, and moreover, as I told you earlier, Leibniz wanted to develop a system, a code, a communication system that would allow everything to be expressed, all realities, with only two signs, zero and one. The universal characteristic, as he called it. You see that this already anticipates alternating current and computing. So there you go, no, no, it's serious. So, at that time, it was the apogee of the positive answer to the question of Kenna Schein.
1:26:07 Schein, I don't know how to pronounce it. And in any case, it reminds me of the English word shine, doesn't it? Let me open a parenthesis inspired by this name. Of course, this isn't at all meant as a joke, one doesn't joke about proper names. But I'll point out here that shine, which as you know means to glow in English, is connected to the German root. English is a Germanic language, apart from words of French origin. English is German, it's the Vikings, who populated England from the 9th century onward.
1:26:37 So in German, Schein, but this time spelled S-C-H-E-I-N, Schein means appearance. And in English, to shine. And in French, we say — careful, because there's appearance too — all that glitters is not gold. You see? I mention this in passing. Can we say that mathematics is anything but Schein, isn't it? I mean it's supposed to be the reality of things.
1:27:07 Truth, in any case, is the highest level of abstraction that philosophy seeks to construct. That philosophy tries to have a rigor comparable to that of mathematics — yes, comparable, but not at all of the same nature and not at all using the same approach. I said this earlier. I spent almost two hours explaining why. Because the great concern of philosophy is know thyself. It's about tracking down the truth, not of the sun, of a star, of an atom, of an elementary particle, but of a subject.
1:27:44 Not of a something, but of a someone. Once we've understood this distinction, we'll have made an immense step toward the cycle awaiting us. When a great psychoanalyst like Lacan says: before signifying something, every word signifies for someone. Take a soldier on a train — well, that doesn't exist anymore since there's no longer compulsory military service. But before, at the time of leave, there were trains full of uniforms, and so young men who missed it a bit at the barracks, isn't it, would make advances on a young woman on the train, most of the time fairly courteously, and of course trying to make her laugh, to amuse her, and I don't know if — one shouldn't be macho, but anyway, I mean Stendhal said: make a woman laugh, and you're in her bed — I don't know anything about that.
1:28:39 I know that many Nordic women have told me that the French don't suspect how appreciated they are abroad for the way they are funny. All this seems a bit random to me. Where am I going with this? What the soldier says isn't important. What matters, his goal, is that she doesn't get off at the first stop or change compartments — before signifying something. So even if what I'm saying doesn't mean anything, it's a bit of nonsense, of puns, before — that's the most important word — signifying something, every word signifies for someone.
1:29:20 It's that someone — the fact that I'm addressing this one, that one — who really determines what I say. Not what I say, but to whom I say it. Yes, to whom, not what. We find again the dichotomy: something, someone. So, there, I'm answering no, in fact, to the question. Yes, it comes close to mathematics, but then there's another word that separates mathematics and philosophy, it's the word abstraction — philosophy, in drawing closer to the subject, seeks — there's nothing more concrete than the truth of a subject.
The abstract, the concrete, understanding and reason 1:30:04 Isn't that so? When someone has a heartbreak because of being abandoned in love, or the grief of a mother who sees her son leave for war — war catches up with all of us. At the moment of waving the handkerchief as the train pulls away, we're not in abstraction, quite the opposite. We're not in if A equals B, then B equals A, no. Subjects are involved. And earlier I told you, when it's serious, when it comes to subjects, when something profound is happening, we must no longer let ourselves be shut up in the bubbles where they want to divide us.
1:30:43 Isn't that so? That's what makes me say — it may sound a bit provocative — we all desire the same thing. Not at the same moment, of course, not at 12 years old and at 20. We're not at the same stage of knowledge, of experience, so it varies. But roughly, the path is the same, somehow. So what am I in the process of saying? That abstraction is often linked to the universal.
1:31:13 If I say — not Pierre, Paul or Jacques, one being a redhead, another having a tic, the third wearing glasses — all that is concrete. If instead of all that I say Pierre, Paul, Jacques, if I say three men, that's much more abstract, more general. I say a dog — you realize, between a dachshund and a Saint Bernard, there's quite a range — and all that, we abstract away, that's where 'abstract' comes from, from all these concrete differences into a somewhat grayish generality.
1:31:47 Dog — the word dog in general contains little compared to a dog trained for terrier work, or one who loves swimming, like Labradors, isn't it? Or one who is rather a homebody, whatever, I mean. But there, it's much more concrete as soon as you get specific, as soon as you move away from the big general balloons. Now, can we say that mathematics is nothing but abstraction?
1:32:18 Philosophy seeks the concrete. In his introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Hyppolite — undoubtedly one of the best translators of Hegel, in any case the one who did the most to introduce him in France, before and especially after the war — said that this philosophy is above all a quest for the concrete. The concrete, and he adds that our time, like probably every era, applies itself to seeking it in philosophy.
1:32:52 Yes, the concrete — it's a concrete quest. That's why it can't remain at X equals Y. Because we never know what we're talking about. No, it's not me criticizing mathematics. It's one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, Bertrand Russell, who worked with Whitehead, who knew well — I don't know — the founder of the analytic school, and Wittgenstein and company — Russell, the English mathematician, said, about mathematics.
1:33:22 Mathematics is a discourse in which we never know what we're talking about. That's already quite something. But it's even more serious, what he adds: nor whether what we're saying is true. We'll develop that another time. It's a tribute to mathematics — for some might get it wrong — to its power and its flexibility. Can we say that mathematics is the highest level of abstraction, in the sense of the general abstract? Yes. But then, what a paradox!
1:33:52 How is it that, although it's the most abstract discourse, it's since we developed mathematics that we've penetrated the outer concrete — not the concrete of interiority, but the concrete of things? The astrologers understood nothing about the stars. Nothing at all. It took astronomy, that is, a detour through mathematics, starting with Galileo, for example, to begin to understand something about the world around us. And Galileo insists, saying, it's not with my telescope alone that I understood everything, it's that I did a lot of equations.
1:34:28 I say this because there are those who tell the story that Newton was daydreaming in the countryside, then saw an apple fall, and that's it, he discovered universal attraction. For millennia men had watched apples fall in orchards, and that didn't make them Newton. He had worked out thousands of equations before seeing that apple fall. Let's say it was ripe, no pun intended, isn't it, for him to deduce the law of attraction from it. So mathematics is strangely, isn't it—
1:35:01 And here I'll quote Leibniz to finish with the mathematical side, in order to come back to philosophy. Leibniz said — and he knew as much about mathematics as about philosophy, so I take him as a privileged reference — 'There is nothing concrete except through the abstract.' That is, through the detour of the abstract. We understand the trajectory of the star Sirius or whatever, or of such-and-such a galaxy, only from where — the speed at which its light reaches us, sorry, the distance its light must travel before reaching us — we understand it only through the detour of pages and pages and pages and pages, isn't it—
1:35:42 Of equations. So, yes, abstract, concrete, interesting. But philosophy does not at all seek the same kind of abstraction. Once again, it wants to know the truth of someones and not of somethings, and that's not at all the same logic. To move quickly, I'll finish answering our friend Charine Lutz's question on this point: the logic of mathematics, like that of science in general and mathematics in particular, is a science of the understanding, of the intellect, which raises no question of values — it's not about good and evil, the goal of philosophical inquiry is the true and the false, which is very different.
1:36:23 So that's the logic of the understanding: true, false, true, false. Whereas, philosophy, in raising the problem of values — not just justice, the beautiful, the true, the useful — passes from understanding to reason. I say this because the two are often confused. We think mathematics is the triumph of reason, when it's the triumph of the understanding.
1:36:53 You find this difference even in French at its simplest, most immediate level, through two different adjectives formed from the word 'raison' [reason]. The word 'rationnel' — 'ratio' means reason in Latin, rational; I'm not saying mathematics is irrational, far from it, rational — but there's also, from 'raison,' 'raisonnable' [reasonable]. And a boy, a child, when we say 'at least you're being reasonable,' or a drunkard who suddenly decides to measure a little the quantity of drink he swallows, we say 'good, you're being reasonable.'
1:37:29 There, it has nothing to do with knowledge as such. There, it's in terms of value that there's a shift. Good and evil appear, not just the true and the false. There we go. And I'm delighted to see our loyal Daniel Arias, who always makes extremely relevant posts, and I'll take the opportunity to say that we also find these reflections on Histoire et Société, Danielle Bleitrach's blog.
The dream of mathematizing philosophy and dogmatism 1:37:59 And I'm particularly — I really appreciate Daniel's contributions to this blog, which I cannot recommend to you enough, Histoire et Société. Leibniz wanted to create an automaton to hold a philosophical discourse. He ends up arriving at the perfection of the binary system. There we go. But Daniel's intervention allows me to conclude the previous question in a much more decisive way, namely that it was a great dream of the 17th century to mathematize philosophy.
1:38:37 That's a contradiction. You can't mathematize with a language that says 'day breaks.' You never know if I'm speaking literally or figuratively. It doesn't work. The first to understand this was Kant. At the end of the 18th century — I'm giving a few historical markers and reminders — but Kant showed that this tendency to want to reach absolute knowledge through a succession of equations, philosophically, in philosophy — very valid in physics.
1:39:09 It made physics possible, and considerable development in chemistry, biology — equations — but in philosophy, it leads to what Kant calls dogmatism. Not in the ordinary sense, the stubborn guy, no. Leibniz, Spinoza were not stubborn people, they're among the greatest minds. That's not what existed. But what is dogmatic in them, and in Descartes too, is that they found a principle and from there believed nothing could resist knowledge.
1:39:39 I'll quote for this — the one who illustrates it best is Descartes. He has all these flaws and qualities, everything that's magnificent in him, and at the same time everything illusory that Kant denounces as the illusion of dogmatism, when he says — a phrase I like to quote — 'these long chains of reasons' — and he's talking about mathematics — 'these long chains of reasons, all simple and easy' — easy for him — 'which geometers use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations'—
1:40:09 had given me occasion to imagine — and here's where the dogmatic leap occurs — 'that all things that can fall within human knowledge follow one another in the same way.' So we're no longer talking about the triangle, about number, about odd and even. There, all things that can fall within human knowledge — should I put a relative who is dying of cancer and suffering out of his misery, or should I let him live, and the problem of... All that, you just have to press a button on a computer that will say no.
1:40:42 I resume the quotation and continue. 'These long chains of simple and easy reasons which geometers use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations had given me occasion to imagine' — it's more a reasoning, an imagining — 'that all the things that can fall within the knowledge of men follow one another in the same way' — implying, like the propositions and theorems of a mathematics textbook — 'and that, provided one abstains from accepting as true any that is not, and provided one never omits a link' — these long chains — 'and always keeps the order needed, from the simple to the complex, there can be none so far removed that one does not eventually reach it, nor so hidden that one does not discover it,' isn't it?
1:41:31 As one pulls off the sheets from a naked body hidden beneath them — I say this because there's a musketeer side to Descartes, you know him well, you can feel his sword isn't far away — 'nor so hidden that one does not discover it' — there you go, masks fall, especially since his motto is already about being masked, a true musketeer, a true warrior, that was his trade as an aristocrat — there you go, you see, there are no more limits, that's what is dogmatic in the philosophical sense — it doesn't mean idiots at all, but there's this illusion — there you go. So let's continue on these themes, since now I'm very happy to find Sébastien again, and I take the opportunity to tell him — sorry, this is a bit personal — that I was very touched by his messages about the musical pleasures he was able to enjoy through me, in the podcasts I alluded to earlier. I was very touched, I'll answer him in more detail live very soon. There you go. Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz were great metaphysicians, yes, it's the apogee of metaphysics
1:42:41 of the 17th century. Can we say that since Kant and Hegel in particular, metaphysics has come to an end, notably in favor of gnoseology? Thanks, etc. My regards as well. Now, careful, the answer isn't quite the same for Kant and for Hegel. What's certain is that metaphysics as envisioned by the great metaphysicians of the classical era — not to keep repeating '17th century' — especially with the extravagant project of believing that with a mathematical, algebraic method for Leibniz, geometric for Descartes rather — though actually Descartes unified the two, which is what gave us Cartesian graphs, isn't it—
1:43:26 That's immense, all the same, but metaphysics — the basic problems, the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, being resolvable by this kind of approach — since Kant, I mean, that's completely collapsed, hasn't it? But Hegel said a phrase that answers Sébastien's question well; he said: 'Since Kant, that's settled — even I subscribe to it — since Kant, metaphysics is only a part of logic.'
1:44:05 So he says — 'in favor of gnoseology,' I'd say in favor of logic. There's a transcendental logic in Kant, a dialectical logic in Hegel, sorry, since I'm being asked, I'll take the chance to set things straight. There you go. And one of the dominant schools, if not the dominant ideology, neo-positivist, in vogue in the Nordic and Anglo-Saxon countries — the school, also called analytic — which reduces statements to propositions, to propositional calculus, well anyway — and so which somewhat repeats the illusion Kant denounces, which is still waiting, isn't very far from what Hegel says, since it privileges within statements, so elements of language, or rather of discourse, in their case.
1:45:04 We'll have time to see the distinctions involved there. But I don't want to lose the thread. Now, language is logos, isn't it, in Greek. And logos is also what gives us 'logic.' So it's not so far removed. Whether it's the analytic school, or the dialectic, dia-logos, or the transcendental logic in Kant, we can say that metaphysics was absorbed by logic after the 18th century.
Mathematics, the nuclear weapon and the indictment of technology 1:45:34 There we go. If there are other questions. Hello, good evening Mounir. Delighted also for this reunion. Isn't mathematics also the origin of a weapon that risks bringing about a most shadowy nuclear twilight for us? Well, this gives me the opportunity here, since Mounir asks this question, to reconnect with Philippe Mouraud, who played such an important role in our association, and who, well, is now busy, commuting between the Île-de-France and the Lyon region for professional reasons, and so he can no longer take care of our videos, and so Pierre-Alain has taken over.
1:46:13 But he did it admirably. It's just that Philippe had picked up on the quotation from Aristotle that I reproduced earlier, which says "mathematics unites men," the opposite of what Mounir seems to be indicating here, mathematics unites men, politics divides them. He said to me, look closely at mathematics, you see, it only serves — young people who do math end up getting paid by a bank to do tax optimization, that's exactly the opposite of the unification of humanity, that's domination.
1:46:51 There's a confusion, and I do mean a confusion, that is to say there's a misunderstanding if you prefer — it's not that one of us is right or wrong, there's a misunderstanding when I speak of mathematics. I'm speaking of what is common to all mathematicians, that is to say, as I told you earlier, you give them an equation, you ask them to find the roots, they will all find the same roots. If they are mathematicians who are at all sharp, if they're not fourth-grade students. It's in this sense that when we're in the very elaboration of mathematical discourse, all men are united there.
1:47:26 There isn't a Japanese version, is there, of the roots of the second-degree trinomial and a Patagonian version. No. So there, one is right to say that mathematics unites men, they all find themselves, aren't they, on the same procedure, the same results, starting from the same premises. But these same men can otherwise kill one another in another domain than that of knowledge, that of action, that of politics. There you go. So now I'll answer more precisely what Mounir is saying.
1:47:59 We need to be careful of a confusion that is very common in our era and which can be the occasion — this isn't the case with Mounir, I've seen a few of his posts, it's not at all the case, thankfully — but I'm thinking of Heidegger and those under his influence who spend their time putting technology on trial, and so technique becomes powerful technology when it passes through the detour — there Mounir is right — of mathematics. But watch out, all of that is a collection of tools, whether it's a particle accelerator, CERN in Geneva, the largest in the world, or a flint that lets you cut a reindeer's meat in the time of Neanderthals, in every case, technique is the realm of means.
1:48:50 And when with a knife you kill your rival, you murder someone, it's not the knife that gets sent to prison. So we must stop putting technique on trial. You know very well that technique isn't responsible. What's responsible is the one who wields the tool. So with the same tool, I'll stick with the knife example, I can do the worst or the best.
1:49:20 That is, remove someone's appendix when they would have died of peritonitis an hour later if I hadn't intervened. And likewise, with nuclear power, we've seen spectacular cures, destructions of cancer cells, but we can also blow up the planet, quite thoroughly. So once again — and I'm not even talking about nuclear power used for heating, lighting, etc., without any impact on carbon dioxide emissions, which is still quite a lot.
1:49:55 Especially once we get to controlled fusion, right? which is being pursued by the research going on in southern France at ITER. Where the fuel, if I may say so, will be neither uranium nor anything radioactive, but hydrogen, which we're unlikely to run short of since it makes up about 90% of what composes the universe. There you go. So they are not the source of a weapon.
1:50:27 I mean, that these weapons wouldn't have existed without mathematics, that's possible, but it's not mathematics that does good and evil. Mathematics deals with the true and the false. Then, the use that's made of it, the application made of it, that's where subjects come in. And that's the title of our session tonight, and the subject in all this. We mustn't forget that. We mustn't let ourselves be shut up in the objects that hide it. Get that tool out of my way, it's hiding the one who wields it.
Philosophy of nature, empiricism and behaviorism 1:50:59 The one responsible, the true one responsible, the, the, the. There you go. If we don't concern ourselves with philosophy of nature, that's an interesting reflection. It's not a question. It's a peremptory assertion. He has the right to make it. We shouldn't be surprised that behaviorism, Anglo-Saxon empiricism, and cognitive science reign supreme. I agree that Anglo-Saxon empiricism reigns supreme over contemporary thought.
1:51:35 That means dominant. It's not the only thing, but it's what dominates. Bravo. Since Waterloo. You remember earlier I said, that great episode running from the storming of the Bastille to Waterloo. I'm not saying Napoleon would have done better, but in any case, it was something else. The world we live in, starting from Waterloo, begins a process that will end with the two greatest carnages humanity has ever seen. There you go. I'm not a racist. I'm not saying there are Anglo-Saxon chromosomes that are criminal.
1:52:06 There are different reasons, not least the economic and political system in which most of the Nordic countries function. But I agree with him, don't I, that Anglo-Saxon empiricism and cognitive science — let me take the opportunity to poke a bit of fun at the expression, and the reason for taking some distance from it. Isa, I don't know if it's a boy or a girl, actually, it doesn't change much about the matter — cognitive science, it's verbal magic, expressions like that.
1:52:39 Scire means to know in Latin. S-C-I-R-E, whence the word science in French. There you go. It means knowledge. Cognitive means, means to know, cognoscere. So it means the knowing knowledge, so to speak. It's wordplay. There you go. I'll close this little semantic parenthesis. But what Isa implies, but he can correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm reading too much into his thought or distorting it, if he's opposing here philosophy of nature and justifying the need to take into account a nature-philosophy, as it's called, because it's an old German tradition, a Naturphilosophie, particularly in Schelling, which seems that at the deepest level, one shouldn't stop only at behaviorism, Anglo-Saxon empiricism, and cognitive science, and leave it at that.
1:53:40 He implies that philosophy of nature is very different, precisely, from this empiricism and from cognitive science and behaviorism. I can see there's theoretical culture in Isa, since "comportementalisme" is the literal French translation of "behaviorism," a major current of Anglo-Saxon thought, especially American, actually — I'm thinking of Watson — which also has successes to its credit. Don't put words in my mouth that all of that is...
1:54:11 there is sometimes charlatanism, but there are also very great advances. Let me give an example, playing devil's advocate, if Isa will allow me a moment, about... the relation between language and thought. They used to be opposed — there's language, over here, I address others, it's sound, I express myself, and then there's what I have inside, thought, as if they were two substances independent of one another. It has been proven that one couldn't think if there were no language.
1:54:44 And this was measured, in behaviorist laboratories, in comportementalist laboratories. You see that I... I try to be intellectually honest. Electrodes were placed on the larynx and on the muscles of the tongue, electrodes, and it was found, by recording the vibrations, that when someone thinks, without opening their mouth, they initiate, without realizing it, with their larynx, with their tongue, right, the words corresponding to the ideas they are turning over.
1:55:19 If there's a labrador, the syllables L, A, B, R, etc. are sketched out, barely, right, but enough to be recorded. There you go. That said, so, coming back, there would then be a philosophy of nature that would not be scientific, so that would be, if I understand correctly, a metaphysics of nature, ultimately. So, well, we'd need to clarify what we mean here by philosophy of nature, right, because I think of Rousseau, for instance — one can't say Rousseau lacked regard for nature, but he doesn't confuse it with philosophy.
1:56:11 Everything men have made, says Rousseau in Emile, men can destroy, can undo. Everything men have made, men can undo. There is no ineffaceable character that cannot be destroyed or undone except what nature imprints, and nature makes neither the rich man, nor the prince, nor the great lord. There you go, so once again, neither good nor evil is nature's affair. And since it's an important quest in philosophy, I have trouble reconciling the two, philosophy and nature.
1:56:43 That physics, which is a physics of nature, is almost a tautology, since "physique" comes from "physis," which in Greek means nature. There you go, that's how I answer — I'm not resolving the aporias raised by Isa, which are very interesting, thank you very much for his contribution — but I'm showing the problems that arise as soon as one approaches this sort of thing. As I said earlier, I don't know if there is a philosophy of nature, but I have trouble understanding a dialectic of nature from the moment dialectic — no one denies, when we speak of dialectic, whatever conception one may have of it, that it implies contradiction.
1:57:26 Now, for there to be contradiction, there must be diction, there must therefore be a world that speaks, which is not the case with nature. There you go. I find the contributions this evening very interesting — the vanities of thought that we're living through the terminal crisis of capitalism. Will the coming months decide the historic situations, socialism or barbarism? Excellent question. You can imagine I don't have the answer just like that to questions so sharply framed.
Crisis of Atlanticist capitalism and the tendential fall in the rate of profit 1:58:02 Is it vanity of thought? So, out of caution, I'd say that there are those who have been waiting a long time for the terminal crisis of capitalism. That said, I have said before that ecologism, which I don't at all confuse with the legitimate concern we ought to have for our environment, which we should have in a collective and planned way and not in fantastical catastrophism, and not in degrowth, which suits the employers' side so well.
1:58:33 When the employers' side wants to put millions of people out of work and hears people advocating degrowth, they rub their hands with glee. But that's not at all what Tan is saying. I'm taking the opportunity to show what tends to attach itself to this kind of issue. So, why do I think of ecology? Because I often happen to say that ecologism is the final phase of capitalism. Capitalism was a fabulous factor for a certain...
1:59:04 Well, capitalist societies have been a factor of progress. Careful, no value connotation when I say progress. It could be progress toward ignominy. A progression, if you prefer. But I mean it in the technical sense, purely technical. Not a moral progress nor an aesthetic progress and so on, right? The way the Papuans — I'm speaking of a society that technically is among the most primitive of humanity, in New Guinea.
1:59:34 But in aesthetic matters, they're not primitive at all. They have a sense of body painting that is absolutely unique in the world. Only in sub-Saharan Africa do you find such a sense of bodily decoration. So, I don't know whether we're in the terminal crisis of capitalism, but what's certain, and here I grant that Tanes is right to raise the question, it's not senseless at all, is that what's currently happening at the economic level, and which precedes the geopolitical or military crisis everyone is aware of, which has preceded it for a long time, is the economic crisis of the capitalist system.
2:00:21 I don't like saying "Western," this isn't aimed at Tanes's contribution, which I'm taking the opportunity to address, right? I've already said that "Western" means what's to the west, and since we've known the Earth is round, the west is wherever you want it to be. It's a word that hides something. "The West" doesn't mean anything, geographically or... There you go. Or else you need a reference point. If I'm Turkish, say, and I speak of the Roman Empire, I'd say that the Roman Empire, for me, is the West. Right? But if I'm Spanish, Rome is to the East.
2:00:53 What do you want me to say? It's east of Spain. So these are words that don't mean anything. On the other hand, capitalism, yes, whether it's Japanese, right? So Far Eastern, or Western, doesn't change anything about the matter. Or Californian. So, having recalled that, I'm surprised that even among people close to my political convictions, I notice people keep saying all the time "the Westerners," whether to condemn or approve them, doesn't matter, but I mean, people say "the Westerners."
2:01:24 It does capital a service to drown capitalism in the notion of the West. Let's say — it's my preferred term because it's more precise — the Atlanticists. The terminal crisis of Atlanticism is a particular form of capitalism. Lenin himself knew that a certain degree of capitalism had to be tolerated, one that's controlled, dominated, right? I'm thinking of the NEP, the New Economic Policy, in the 1920s, which was a period of prosperity, before Nazi barbarism came to reset everything to zero, less than zero even, through its destruction.
2:02:05 I'm thinking of China, right? Which lets Chinese capitalism run wild and then reels it back in like someone fishing with a reel. Right? When suddenly there's a risk of it running off the rails or of overinflation, etc. So there's a risk, they lower or raise the interest rate, for instance, they do that with tremendous mastery, the Chinese. So once again, what's really in crisis is what's called here "Western," and which can't be called Western because that muddies the waters, I repeat, but the crisis of Atlanticist capitalism.
2:02:47 You see, I don't bash Americans, I bash Atlanticism. You might tell me this is a bit confused, what I'm saying, because it's true that the United States of America, or rather the executive — that's where I'm being sincere — American, there are Americans who criticize the American government's policy enormously, the American executive is the flagship of the Atlantic Alliance which brings together, right?
2:03:20 And I'm not even talking about its allies like Australia, Japan, etc. I mean, it's the most formidable armada of all time in military terms. So that's it, it's this organization that's in crisis, right? Look how pleased with themselves they are, when Macron had said NATO was brain-dead — that was his phrase, I don't remember exactly, there was a term that meant something like that — that suddenly, thanks to the Russians, right, thanks to Putin, there you have it, Putin, without meaning to, achieved the opposite of what he wanted, he reunified NATO's strength.
2:03:58 No, NATO isn't stronger. Now, in terms, above all, of the number of forces now going to Ukraine, well anyway, and getting destroyed by Russian artillery, that's quite another matter. So, is it vanity of thought that we're living the terminal crisis of capitalism? What's certain — and here I'll be very precise to answer Tana — is what Marx calls the tendential fall in the rate of profit. Go on, I'm not the only one saying it, but this isn't the moment to forget it.
2:04:31 It's because Marxism is ostracized, right, and not very often given airtime on TV panels, that we forget to bring it into the discussion. But it's so obvious that this is the real reason for the crisis that capitalism can no longer escape from. Except, it can reset the clocks and do a "reset," if you want to speak in computing terms, by launching a generalized war. That's exactly what it has always done. The only world wars that have occurred, and the greatest carnages that resulted from them, came from the so-called Western countries, that is, from Atlanticist capitalist countries, predominantly Anglo-Saxon, predominantly.
2:05:14 There are English and Americans who oppose this system, and they're quite right to. Will the coming months decide it? So there, I'll say outright that I'm not going to answer, I can't answer, I don't know, I don't like playing the prophet, first because I can't, and also because I think it doesn't make much sense, because the process that's underway could last a very long time, just as it could stop within two months. Or be suspended within two months. But certainly not the loss — the tendential fall in the rate of profit, that's nowhere near stopping.
2:05:48 Alright, let me say roughly what it's about, right? People think the capitalist is someone who wants to make the maximum profit, etc. One has to be naive to think that. No, I'm not whitewashing him, quite the opposite, that is, if the cost of production — I'm just making up a number — cost me, as a boss, 200,000 euros, and I sell my product for a million, why not 2 million, 3 million? If I want, if really, if it's the amount of profit that interests me, can I also raise the price as much as I like?
2:06:22 No, you know very well that's not so, because — and this is the drama of capitalism — no, it's not the workers, it's not the unions, it's not the communists, it's not... No, the capitalist's drama is that he's not the only producer on the market, he has competitors, so he cannot afford to have prohibitive prices. So the calculation of price under the capitalist system is done according to a slider that moves to the right when I want to increase my surplus value, and to the left when I realize I'm above the market's average price, until the fair price is found.
2:07:05 All right? Now, what allows me to lower my prices and stay competitive? Buying machines, since it's labor time that costs me money. The more hours of labor there are to pay, the more it's an expense. Well yes! Even though it's what earns me more — human labor power. At the outset, it's an expense. So I'm going to buy machines to stay competitive, but good heavens!
2:07:37 The more machines I buy, the less profit I make. That's what Marx was the first to see. Try not putting oil, gasoline, in the car, it stops working. Whereas human labor power — you can make a guy work 10 hours when he would only have needed 5 hours to produce the value he was after. That's what Marx understood with the theory of surplus value.
2:08:08 So, to simplify, let's take a small neighborhood bookshop and a gigantic store like FNAC or another, or nowadays, the biggest bookseller in France is apparently Leclerc. You see? Well. It's obvious that the small bookseller has a higher rate of profit than FNAC, but a much smaller mass of profit. FNAC will be more competitive than the small bookseller, but it will sell on a much larger scale.
2:08:48 And so, little by little, this tendential fall in the rate of profit means that capitalism, and this is an expression of Marx's, becomes its own gravedigger. It's the one sawing off the branch it's sitting on. And if it's still here, it's precisely because each time, it can do a reset with wars, with... Yes. And especially with propaganda, to make the pleasure last.
2:09:19 So there you go, I mean, will the coming months decide the historical hesitation? I confess personally — I told you I'm a septuagenarian — I have never seen such a danger of war, but at the same time, I've also never seen an Atlanticism, since now I'll try to be precise, an Atlanticist capitalism, so poorly off. I mean, if it weren't for the sacred union against Russia, the Western world would drop like a stone, given the economic deadlines knocking at the door.
2:09:50 Did you see the latest appearance of... who was it? It was... Yes, it was our finance minister, who appeared with a turtleneck on television to tell the French — hands, no, we were told capitalism worked miracles. No, but they'll never say it like that, they won't say that it's capitalism that's the cause of the fact that we're going to be cold, that we're going to struggle to get light, to get heat. No, it's Russia's fault. Well, of course, isn't it?
2:10:25 There, recently, the explosions that happened in the North Sea, right? The Russians draw their treasury from gas, they've never made as much money as since we imposed these sanctions on them regarding their energy sources, gas and oil. And now they say it's them who blew up the pipeline. It's extraordinary. Soon the Russians will be bombing the Central Bank of Russia. So, we're... There, come on, let's be serious. So, yes, I have never seen capital.
Crisis of democracy, legality and legitimacy 2:10:58 If it were cruising along, without a geopolitical crisis, there would be the gravest economic crisis after which the one of 1929 or the subprime crisis would look like small change. That's how I'll finish, provisionally, I can't settle the answers to the second part of the question. I can't date the deadlines. That's how I answer Tannes and I thank him for his question, which is very topical. So, can this fight for dialectics be waged within democracy?
2:11:30 Good evening, Julien. In the name of free expression and public debate. Well, I'm not going to tackle that tonight because it's too important, isn't it, to do it just like that at the tail end of the session. But I intend here to call on a comrade, a faithful follower — sorry to use English — I'm thinking of Jean-Michel Toulouse, who has just published a magnificent piece of research precisely on the changes that need to be made to the functioning of democracy in these times.
2:12:10 He understood very well, Jean-Michel — he's not the only one, but he understood better than the vast majority — through his research work, very well informed, substantiated, even quantified at times, on the crisis of so-called representative democracy. We're supposed to be represented by parliamentarians, aren't we, who gathered — we're so well represented that when we said no in the referendum on the European Constitution, those who are supposed to represent us went and overturned our no at Versailles, at the Congress.
2:12:47 It's really extraordinary what we're living through, as a perversion — it's not just a distortion, it's a perversion, the worst kind, of democracy. I don't understand how we can lecture the rest of the world on democracy and human rights when we start by saying: what you voted for doesn't interest us. However you vote, it's we who will decide. That's exactly what happened with the referendum on Europe, to the point that, indirectly at least, I know how to answer Julien for now.
2:13:25 I'd even say that some people say, and I'm not far from thinking it too, that since that congress at Versailles, in which the Socialist Party too — the anti-communist left was there, I mean, to be clear — and all the other right-wing parties, of course, liberals, neoliberals, gathered at Versailles to annul the effects of the vote of 55% of the French, that's still a lot of people. And God knows the turnout had been high, that's not like Macron who is elected by 12% of registered voters.
2:14:00 crisis of democracy, that's what governs us and that leads us into war without consultation, by the way. All of this is indirect answers. So, since — some say that since this congress met, we've been living under a coup d'État regime, that is, in total illegitimacy. Legality is not legitimacy.
2:14:31 In 1942, legality was Pétain. Legitimacy was de Gaulle, who was illegal, by going off to England and opposing the French government and Parliament of the time. There you go. So, it's serious, what's happening, this fight for dialectics that used to be waged within democracy. We have a question about public debate.
2:15:02 I sense that Julien would like to rehabilitate the dictatorship of the proletariat. But correct me if that's not the case. But I do believe it. And why not? I mean, it's... But we mustn't make the same blunder again. I mean, I'm not a theologian. I mean, I'm not for or against the dictatorship of the proletariat. You never solve problems that are so badly posed. Marx said that mystification lies less in the answers given than in the way the questions are posed.
2:15:34 That's not the case here. That's not the case. On the contrary, it's an excellent question, Julien's, which allows us precisely to see clearly how questions are generally badly posed. No, free expression. I mean, first of all, it doesn't exist anywhere. The countries that claim it most, freedom of expression, I'm thinking of the United States, still, I mean, there are things that are forbidden. And here at home, there are people who aren't happy with the Gayssot law, but still, I mean, there is racist, antisemitic, Nazi propaganda that is forbidden.
2:16:10 So, I mean, I'm not for liberalizing all that. Right? Otherwise we're going to become like Ukraine, with people who flat out decide there should be a Bandera street in the capital. One of the greatest war criminals of all time. Really. There you go. So, yes, what can be waged within democracy, among activists, of course, the whole thing is to unite.
2:16:40 What's dramatic currently, I presume this is what these questions are getting at, is the state of what used to be called the left. There is no more left. It's so fragmented, atomized, splitting into so many little groupuscules you'd need a microscope to spot them. Isn't that so? If capital, in the state of decay it's in, still holds on, it's because there's nothing opposing it.
2:17:10 It's like, we're not even talking about France Insoumise, I mean, there are people put in there, there's such a mixture, but still, above all there are 'societal' people in there rather than 'social' ones. There's social rhetoric, but the reality is societal, if you look closely, on average — the majority, and the sociology of those who subscribe, on average.
2:17:40 That's not... There you go. There's no more left. Since the Communist Party disappeared, I note there's no more left in France. Don't forget that when all the parties, including the non-communist left, voted full powers to Pétain, the Communist Party was the only one, as an organization — individuals, even royalists, being opposed to collaboration, that's another matter, of course, we have to be honest — but as an organization, there's no comparison.
2:18:11 There you go. That's how I answer. Yes, it's the partisans of historical and dialectical materialism who saved the honor. Julien, thank you for the question. I don't want to take up too much of your evening. I see it's... oh dear, it's almost 11pm. But listen, I was delighted to see you all again, so you can't leave each other now. And I'm very happy about your contributions.
2:18:43 Let me remind you that for those who are in the Paris region or who have the chance to come to Paris, our first in-person session since the lockdown, in more than two years, will take place at the Centre Goscinny, rue Goscinny, in the 13th arrondissement. Very easy to find, October 14th at 7pm, between 7 and 9pm. I'll be delighted to meet you in person.
2:19:14 Especially around a good table afterward. There you go. A good table, a nice table. That's already something. Thank you so much. Thanks to Pierre-Alain. And thanks to the association. Thanks to the members. Thanks to subscribers. To newcomers. To the regulars who ask... I haven't answered a quarter of the questions from before the summer break. But I keep working at it. I don't forget any of them, I guarantee it. Very good evening in any case, and good night. And see you next time, this time.
2:19:45 So, in two weeks for these remote workshops, and so, once a month, at the center too. Very good evening to everyone. Thank you.
